11.30.2025

On Saturday, a couple came out to look at buying the desk we bought Mom for her room.  We had it temporarily stored in our bedroom, so Jim and I moved it out to the stairwell...

From there, Jim used the 2-wheeler to take it downstairs into the auto bay.  They came and bought it with no haggling.  It was great while Mom was here, but we just don't have room or need of it any longer.

I took down the fall decorations from inside the house, and Jim brought up the Christmas decorations.  We decided to go low key this year and just put up the important things.  Sunday was the first day of Advent, so we lit the Advent wreath before breakfast...

We saw Mom Saturday evening before church and Jim continued working in the shops on Sunday.

11.29 - High 36.8/Low 25.4
11.30 - High 34.2/Low 26.5

11.28.2025

 Raise your hands if you feel like Snoopy today after that Thanksgiving meal!  Plus, we'll be eating leftovers for days, so that's never a bad thing.

We had our first measurable snow today - it came fast and furious for a while and we got probably an inch.  We still have a coating at the end of the day, but the sun took care of the rest.  It's always amazing to me because when I was in Saratoga visiting Mom and doing a couple errands afterwards, while there were snow flurries in the air, there was nothing on the ground.  On the mountain road on the way home, it suddenly changed to snow on the ground.   Even though we're probably only 10 miles north, the elevation makes a big difference.  We love it!

Jim worked on sharpening the rest of the chipper blades today.  They're all ready to go back in.

High 34.9/Low 29.6 - 1" of snow

11.27.2025

 

We are especially grateful this year to be celebrating Thanksgiving with good health.  Hope everyone had a wonderful day!

We went to see Mom in the morning and took her a cinnamon roll for a treat.  They were having a turkey feast for lunch as well.  Jim did a little coloring activity with her...

We really upped our turkey game this year.  We bought a beautiful new roaster with rack that made life so much easier.  With just the two of us, I found a perfect Tom Jr. - an 8+ pound fresh Butterball.  It turned out perfect...

Jim picked out a new carving knife to up his carving game!  

Carving it up...

Dinner is served!

So very much food, but it was all great and we have plenty of leftovers!

High 39.2/Low 33.1 - few flakes in the air!

11.26.2025

 

Happy Thanksgiving Eve!  After I got home from visiting Mom, I spent the afternoon doing dinner prep for tomorrow.  

Jim had ordered propane last week and the truck pulled up mid-morning.  Now we're all set to go.  You can see all the fog - it was so dense all day.

Jim worked on sharpening the chipper blades this afternoon.  He has to go very slowly...

This is a pair of blades - you can see how nice the one on the left is compared to the right!  He got two blades done and is working on the third.

High 50.2/Low 43.2 - very foggy!

11.25.2025

Jim has spent the last two mornings dealing with computer issues and on the phone with various support people.  Hopefully things are resolved now, but it took up all his normal morning time. 

After lunch, he did some catchup work and then headed out to the pole barn.  Now that we are done chipping for the season, he wanted to sharpen the blades.  Starting to remove the blades from the giant flywheel...

The blades show some wear, but not bad after two summers of chipping work.

High 46.3/Low 30.7

11.24.2025

 We wanted to get the rest of the chipping done, so we headed out in the afternoon.  Here's the before...

Getting started...

My turn...

The after view - looks all clean!

Then we headed down to the end of the driveway - we lost the top of a tree over the summer and wanted to clean up the remains...

The size of logs that this chipper takes is amazing...

High 45/Low 30.3

11.23.2025

Saturday's go by in a blur, but Jim went outside in the afternoon and got the excavator ready for winter.  Throwing the tarp over the top... 

Then getting it all secured...

Today we had a dusting of snow with flurries around most of the day.  We didn't pick up the mail yesterday because it came late, so we walked down in the afternoon.  

We are grateful for good friends who sent amazing chocolate along with a lovely card saying how happy they are that we will be celebrating Thanksgiving in good health.  We had to try them out of course!  

11.22 - High 45.7/Low 25.6
11.23 - High 32.1/Low 24

11.21.2025

It was a chilly day with no sunshine, but we decided to head out mid-afternoon to see if we could get some chipping done.  Getting the chipper all ready to go... 

We started with all the trees we cut down along the rock wall, as well as other branches and limbs in this area...

All our collected piles are now sawdust, and Jim is moving the chipper up to our other piles...

These are the accumulated piles from what Jim cut down last week as well as all we did yesterday...

The chipper continues to be amazing...

One side all done and cleaned up.  Dark settles in quickly, so Jim has to make sure to leave enough time to get the equipment taken apart and put away.   A good afternoon's work!

High 38.8/Low 24.3

11.20.2025

Jim has done the work he wanted to with the excavator before winter, so he's starting to get it ready for hibernation.  Taking the battery out...

Jim brought up his chainsaw and cut the roots off the trees he pulled out...

Jim went behind the wall to cut this root ball off.  It was full of stones, so Jim is leaving that root there for now...

Loading the roots into the bucket...

We took them deep into the woods to put them in our pile to decompose...

You can barely glimpse the blue of Jim's coat through the trees as he started cutting down more trees to give the pines more room to grow...

Jim did a lot of cutting and the woods look much cleaner...

Everything is kind of the same color so it's hard to differentiate, but we have quite a few huge piles to chip!

High 40.3/Low 22.4